Sunday, November 28, 2004

The Ukraine situation appears to be much like the Czech and other secessions from the Eastern Bloc....some of which were no doubt honest but some of which had an eerie stage managed quality to them. Vaclav Havel, of course, became a neo-liberal. Even if he admired the Velvet Underground at one point.

The states of Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union quickly, and somewhat interestingly, fell under the sway of ultra-capitalist propaganda which was surely totally banned in their countries before the fall of Soviet style socialism.

This played very well in the U.S., because it reinforced the idea that Reagan, and Bush I, were right in their ideologies, that Communism was in fact something where people simply wanted to throw off their bonds and become venture capitalists, if given the chance, rather than something which people inside had nuanced opinions about and didn't all necessarily want totally destroyed.

It played well in the U.S. and probably set the stage for the simulacra and simulation which was the first Gulf War: since Communism had necessarily lost to ultra-capitalism there was no longer any issue to be pressed in attacking Saddam, which means no issue to press against the United States in opposition....which means no obligation on the part of the media or anyone else in power to recognize a viewpoint opposing the gulf war as having some sort of validity.

We won, right? Now we're attacking a country which isn't Communist, and since only Leftists, who've been discredited by the fall of the Wall, believe that the West acts for economic reasons, there's no possible criticism that could be made of liberating Kuwait from it's Iraqi invaders.

The same sort of legitimizing process is going on in regards to the Ukraine right now.

No opposition, it's said, could be raised to a grass roots pro-democracy movement in the Ukraine, so Russia, therefore, must be the total bad guy.

We couldn't be doing this for our own self-interest, could we?

We're the Free World, remember!?

So another round of geo-political illusions is likely to start, with the myth of democracy and freedom as things the U.S. is benevolently interested in providing a back drop yet agan.

Only this time we have torture centers in Cuba and mass killings of civillians in Falluja.

But the Iraq war aside, we shouldn't have to have some outside, intervening factor, present in order to know that this whole strategy is a lie.